Life with Conrad

I had a lot of free time this afternoon, and I planned to get a bunch of important things done. Instead, I ended up organizing my old Nintendo cartridges. For quite some time now I've been storing them all in a big cardboard box and it was such a big mess that I had to dig around for 10 minutes to find the game I wanted to play. I'd even forgotten about some of my more obscure games. So today I just dumped the box out on the floor, and I was astonished at how many cartridges there were - 82 total. I divided them into two groups , one elite group for the most prized of my collection (all the Marios, the Zeldas, the Castlevanias, Metroid, Battletoads, etc.), and then another group for all the rest, and then I alphabetized them. But I couldn't resist taking a picture atop all my games before organizing them - I felt just like Scrooge McDuck swimming around in the Money Bin.

I love my old Nintendo. I bought him when I was 9 years old with money that I worked for months and months to earn. I raised $100, and my dad was so surprised that I had managed to earn that much that he pitched in the extra money to get the deluxe edition with the Power Pad and Zapper (both of which I still have). The home movie of me busting out my Nintendo for the first time has become a Tanner Family classic, boasting such classic lines as "This is the happiest day of my life" and "It's like an awcade fow yow house" (I had trouble with 'r's as a youngster). I gave my Nintendo the name Conrad and I used to celebrate his birthday every August (I've forgotten the exact date - I think it was somewhere in the 20s). I've never bought another video game console after Conrad, and he's still going strong after almost 18 years. The two of us still kick some serious butt at Dr. Mario.

I love adding to my game collection - I probably bought 15 games last year. Back in Utah I used to hit various locations of Greywhale every week or so to see if anything good had come in. You'd think that here in Ann Arbor there would be a lot of stores that would carry vintage items like NES games, but there's only one place I know of (Get Your Game On, on Packard near State), and they seriously overcharge.

My roommate Seth pointed out to me during the alphabetizing process that today my entire collection would fit on a single flash drive. True, but there's something very special about having the actual cartridge. It's so real and special. If anyone wants to be my best friend forever and/or my BFF, they can help me fill some of my collection's biggest holes - Contra, Bionic Commando, and Bubble Bobble (my birthday's in less than a month, wink wink).


P.S. - Big shout out to Caleb and Julie for putting all the old Tanner home videos on DVD. I watched the aforementioned home movie a few weeks ago. Man, was I a dorky little kid. Come to think of it, I haven't changed all that much since then. I still play with Conrad, at least.